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Ken Lay’s Former Condo Has Vanished

From the for-sale listings, at least. A reader tips us off that the former Enron CEO’s 12,827-sq.-ft. condo on the 33rd floor of The Huntingdon highrise at 2121 Kirby — which with a break or 2 has been a fixture on Houston’s MLS since early 2010 — is no longer listed for sale. Is the property’s owner — Lay’s widow Linda — just taking a summer break, is another re-listing planned, or is something else going on?

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This past April, the 9-bathroom urban-castle-chic pied-à-terre endured yetanother price cut: this time to $5,750,000. A sale at that price would be a steep, um, mark-to-market discount off the reported original pre-MLS asking price of $12.8 million. But Linda Lay might not see much of that money anyway. At last report, the Justice Dept. was seeking to grab at least $2.5 million from the sale in its ongoing civil forfeiture lawsuit. The government claims Ken Lay paid off his mortgage on the property with “criminal proceeds” in 2001, less than a week after Enron’s bankruptcy.

One might question whether many properties in this town were built with less than honest earnings from Enron……. Lea Weingarten Fastow is the wife of former Enron executive and convicted felon Andrew Fastow and was the second former Enron executive to go to prison after Enron collapsed due to fraud in December 2001.

Fastow is a native of Houston, Texas, where she was born into a Jewish family that founded the Weingarten’s grocery store chain and Weingarten Realty Investors….

Wonder why her investments in to Weingarten Realty were never brought to light?

The Weingarten information was taken directly from Wiki……why they feel the need to make sure everyone knows she came from a “Jewish” family is beyond me as is any reference like that since our color or religion does not define who we become as a person……. The fact that she was directly involved in a large corporate fraud and should have learned better from such an esteemed business family is the real point everyone should start to question……

Andy Fastow should already be out of prison (Club Fed) and again enjoying the high life.
Andy and the wifey should have rotted in a real prison for decades to come. Back in olden days they would have faced a death sentence for their financial swindling.

Charles: Has Lea Weingarten ever been involved in running either the Weingarten grocery chain or realty group? Though she was born into the family, that seems like a large assumption to make. One might assume she inherited some ownership (probably stock–the company went public in 1985) but that is quite different from running things. (There are no Weingartens on the board and only one on the senior management team.)